Modern systems can provide location and tracking services using a variety of technologies. Cell phones, for example, now can have both GPS and cellular location services. Users location can sometimes also be provided in almost real time by social media sites, such as Facebook, when user's “check-in” or use other location features. In addition, personal calendar applications, such as the calendar function in Microsoft Outlook or in Apple's iOS, can also provide information related to the time and locations of meetings and other calendar items.
Due to the sheer amount of data and the variety of sources, however, it can be difficult to know with any certainty when a user is available, for example, or whether they could attend a meeting at a certain time in a certain place. Using just a user's calendar in Outlook®, for example, it may appear as though the user has a meeting at LOAM, but is available for a meeting in New York at 11 AM. This is obviously not possible, however, if the LOAM meeting is in San Francisco. In other words, without accurate data about the user's schedule and location, their availability can be difficult to determine.
Conventional systems tend to be three-dimensional (3D) in nature. In other words, you may be able to ask your phone to remind you to get flowers when you are next near a florist. This relies on chance, however, as does not consider whether, for example, you have time to get flowers at that time. Thus, conventional systems rely solely on the user's 3D location, and have no temporal component. As a result, conventional 3D systems are reactive, as opposed to predictive, and thus have no ability to predict when you will be near a florist and it would be convenient based on your schedule.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that can combine the information available for a user from multiple sources to create an accurate model of the user's location in time. The system can include a reliability, or accuracy, component to indicate the probability that the user's calculated 4D location is accurate at any given time. It is to such a system and method that embodiments of the present disclosure are primarily directed.